MICHAEL MACGARRY: The business called show

The business called show, A  solo exhibition by Michael MacGarry.

Opening reception: Wednesday 6th November - 6pm

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My exhibition – The business called show – is focused on the intricate relationship between entertainment and culture. How the former has taken over the latter – principally through market forces, commodification and non-symbiotic mimicry. My interests are abstract, idiosyncratic and large-modelled but can be distilled to how this binary dynamic shapes our collective existence in the era of the Technium. To define this I would propose a radically reductive assumption; that within the past 8 000 years our collective human technological progress has followed a near-ecological development – from quite basic to staggering complex – on a scale once rapid, then astronomical and now exponential in its growth trajectory. That this arc of progress has come to be understood as our consciousness’ phenotype, to the extent that we now live in a world where a seventh biological kingdom can be said to exist – the Technium – alongside the six other kingdoms of the natural order (plantae, animalia, fungi, protista, eubacteria and archaebacteria). From this core proposal the exhibition is centred on a paradox unique to our era; while entertainment has become a dominant force, the human elements that birthed these creations are slowly being sidelined by the systems we established. How the very creations of humanity, born from our intellect and creativity, are beginning to require us less and less.

In part to challenge narratives of art and industry, the exhibition serves as a visual commentary on a spectacle of modern life, where the allure of entertainment often overshadows deeper cultural values. Just as entertainment is itself then subject to the seemingly never-ending cyclical nature of commodification, and the easing of tensions between our notions of authenticity with that of the spectacle. Perhaps with the idea that what is sacrificed in our pursuit of entertainment is the core concern of my exhibition. The show could also just evidence the material products of my own coping mechainisms for living in a world increasingly driven by technology and entertainment, and how I confront the implications of this shift. I am not certain. Maybe is it rather a case that the only thing to be sure of is that I will never find out.

- Michael MacGarry